In order to process green fruits such as prune plums to produce dried prunes, it has been the practice for many years to arrange the green fruit in a single layer on drying trays for passage through a dehydrator wherein hot air is arranged to remove moisture therefrom to produce the finished product. As a practical matter, the hot air delivered to the dehydrators is maintained at or below 180.degree.F so that the moisture can be removed without adverse effects on the characteristics of the fruit such as a "caramelization" which would destroy the flavor characteristics of the product. In practice, it has been found that at the preferred temperature, a minimal dehydration period of approximately 14 hours is requisite. Quite obviously, this period would be required whether a single prune plum were placed on the tray or the tray were filled to capacity. As a consequence, over the years, dehydrators have assumed the form of elongated tunnels through which stacks of trays can be slowly passed on carts or the like, the individual trays being formed so that they can be stacked in a fashion which permits full contact of the drying air with the fruit on each tray in a stack.
In order to place the green fruit on the trays preparatory to the dehydration operation, mechanism such as disclosed in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,107,800 is conventionally utilized and in effort to maximize the amount of fruit on an individual tray, loading apparatus such as disclosed in the patent of W. L. Gerrans U.S. Pat. No. 2,873,771 has been utilized. In the latter patent, closely compacted green fruit is delivered from a shaker table onto trays which are arranged to move sequentially thereunder for reception of the fruit from the shaker table but, in such transfer, it has been found that a more widely spaced distribution of the fruit on the receiving tray occurs so that a limited amount of fruit is deposited thereon. More particularly, even though the fruit is so arranged on the shaker table to provide substantially 100% coverage in a single layer thereon, the fruits on the receiving tray typically provide only 80% coverage resultant from the natural tendency of the transferred fruits to bounce off one another thus to leave certain spacing therebetween. Accordingly, since the drying temperature is limited and the consequent drying time is consequently restricted, as explained hereinabove, full utilization of the dehydrator is not realized. Since the primary bottleneck in the dried fruit processing resides in the dehydrator because of the fourteen hour drying time and because of the fact that the green fruit should be processed rapidly during the relatively short harvest season (six weeks) an excessive number of dehydrators has seemed mandatory.